


The Dust of Antlers; The Fodder for Pigs.

by his tongue and liver (doubleinfinity)



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Afghanistan, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - War, Anger, Comrades in Arms, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, also they're men big and beefy, beautiful little boys, soliders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 21:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8862100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubleinfinity/pseuds/his%20tongue%20and%20liver
Summary: Years after serving in Bagram, both independently working on recovering from what they learned they were capable of, Eddie seeks out Chris to ask if he will do one more job for him.





	

As he enters the shop, there is something he notices, something hollow, in the way the door jams on the way in, setting the warning bell clinking against its metal shell with a brief and muted thump. It’s plastered to the edge of the front door, so discreetly hung that Eddie might not have heard it if he had not edged in so slowly, but the shopkeeper’s ears are pricked from across the room, discreetly scanning his body for clues.

When Eddie closes the door behind him, he makes sure the bell does not go off a second time. He can instantly tell that this is the first clue- the man behind the desk does not bother to look up again.

Toeing gently through the store, Eddie’s eyes flick about the perimeter, drawing in the buffer of musk that surrounds the shop’s display. The structure itself looks ready to be pawned off for lumber; it’s sunk into rolling pounds of mud in the forest’s deep, a path made of chopped brambles and colored stones directing the way to the front of the shed.

Chris’ private house is not far off from the main road- this man at the register, Chris. He cannot pretend he doesn’t know him, doesn’t know residual information like where he lives and what he drinks before bed- but the shop itself hides acres deep into the woods.

One scan across Chris’ careful eyes brings a rough shiver to the base of his spine. He awkwardly dislodges before the owner can sink his gaze into Eddie’s cornea, past the frozen vitreous liquid that churns with slow reluctance, and remain there each time he closes his eyes to blink. People tend to get stuck inside him. His father has shared sleeping quarters with him ever since he was a small child.

Recognition strikes the man behind the desk. “I didn’t think I’d see you here,” Chris announces, all wonder without the whistle.

There’s something hiding below the gruff statement that sets his pulse going, something sad. Something hollow.

Meandering, Eddie looks around him, the close-shaven head of the veteran framed by products of his own making. There are pieces of furniture; logs tethered by hair-like strands of twine and covered in slabs of skinned animal flesh. Dust creeps up the antlers mounted on the walls, and Eddie is struck at first by the harsh image of how they would be earned: a shot to the heart, (Chris was precise with anything less than a mortar and a human breast, imagine a fucking rifle), and then Chris’ boot on the creature’s sternum as he pries the velvet tusks from their bloody craniums. Then, a softer vision, and Eddie can see his body mounted on the antlers above Chris’ desk. His body relaxes.

“Where’d you think you’d see me?” he passes back, vision hovering over the section 8 discharge paperwork that Chris has clearly framed among the wall décor.

Chris’ eyes give, letting the tenderness of familiarity overcome his features. “What’d’ya need, Gluskin?”

Eddie’s fingers trail over the strands of wood that jut out from a wicker chair in his path, considering. “Guess it depends. What do your antlers retail for?”

There are what look like bruises beneath Chris’ eyes, shadowing the bright specks of light that peer out from deep sockets. Eddie’s are the same, sickly dark, as if they’ve both been thrusting their eyelids constantly to try to keep out what surrounds them. But then, they’ve seen about the same amount of explosions and neither have so much as blinked in horror.

“Not much.” Chris tilts his head. “How ‘bout yours?”

Eddie rubs a hand against his forehead, swallowing an impulsive grin. “Not much,” he repeats. His jacket pocket is weighing him down, and he all-but staggers to the desk to steady himself. “I was pretty sick, you know, after Afghanistan. Left a hot second after you did. Started drinking organic tea and shit, basically forgot everything I was taught… but you still do it. Right?”

The look Chris gives him permeates to their surroundings. Eddie starts to see the texture of the hair, human, that decorates the feathers of the dream catchers hanging from the ceiling; the unique texture of bone that forms intricate shapes in the heels of the furniture. Nobody really buys the furniture.

“I mean, that’s what McHugh said about you, anyway,” he continues, scrutinizing closely. “You know, and, he was right about one thing: they let us go easy.” He shrugs. “We all have our paperclips.” _His_ is holding together the index cards in his pocket, and he pulls the paper free, setting the stack on the desk.

With hardly a blink, Chris pulls the cards towards him, looking down at the address and profile shot gathered for him. The client sets a key on the counter, a gleaming chunk of silver that will allow Chris into Eddie’s history.

While Eddie’s pulling his hands through his dark hair, Chris scans the assignment, then looks back into Eddie’s face, assessing. The male is heavy with the dust that’s settled over him. He sees the ashy pallor that weighs down Eddie’s skin, the shambling mass that is dragging behind him. The air runs through his nose and releases heavily.

“I don’t, anymore” he finally answers, watching Eddie submerge from his mind. “But I will. For you.” He reaches across the counter and grabs Eddie’s hand, squeezing his fingers so that the other will look at him. “Gluskin. Not your fault what you had to do. We were taking orders. Don’t let it haunt you.”

There’s a strong urge to retract his hand forcefully, but Eddie lets himself grin instead, averting his eyes. “You were the smart one, carving a purpose out of it. Me, it just stays behind my eyes like something I can hardly remember, and then I shake up the sand and it falls down in this globe, like it wasn’t real, but I have to keep holding it in my hands.” He shakes his head, straining the muscles in his cramped fingers. “Chris- I wanna know why I had the instinct to do what I did. When we were getting the information out of them, and it became more about just having fun with ‘em, where did it come from? Why did I know what to do?”

He means the violations. Eddie was good at that.

Chris leans down as if making to kiss Eddie’s knuckles, but his teeth settle at the end of his middle finger and then rip the tip of the nail off, severing it from the rest of the cuticle.

After spitting it onto the counter, Chris lets him go. “I’ll have Sveinn match the keratin between the two of you. But I’ll get the real answers from his mouth.”

The urge to flee graces Eddie’s instinct, but even as he’s turning, he freezes to look over his shoulder. Chris is older; the wrinkles around his neck collect to form the layers of a fleshy accordion, and one eye sags lower than the other. But his eyelashes are still blonde, long as fuck, and when Chris blinks, Eddie feels a softness melt from the pit of him.

“Wonder if you should just interrogate _me_ ,” he offers with a hesitant smile, shrugging affectionately. “I’m sure the answers are all up here anyways. Just need the motivation to get ‘em out. I’m a pussy, probably all come tumbling down after a few dig ‘ins.”

Chris smiles. He does not hate the idea. “That’s something to ask a therapist for, Gluskin.”

“Ah. They’re not allowed to, these days.” Eddie gives a cold wink. The bell rings twice behind him.

-

Each time the bus rocks unsteadily on its wheels, the fluorescent lining of the public vehicle shudders before jolting back on. He can’t help but vigorously notice the absence in the seats; the GMT riders fill the space with their bodies and baggage, but the light behind their eyes, used to illuminate the darkening scenes in the windows, or the folded paperbacks on their knees, flicker off even more frequently than the mercury, contained within thin panels of glass.

Consciously, Chris straightens his legs, unclasping his knees. The briefcase tucked between his calves unsticks memories from longer than a lustrum ago. They are methodical, repetitive images of him bending over his desk and fitting each tool into its proper pouch, so that only the metal tips sticks out. He’s a big guy himself, but he’s always worked small. Pokers and blades and needles; something that will focus on a single neuron until it’s screaming for his neighbors to feel what he feels.

When they were back Bagram, all the torture was done by fists and whatever came in the duffel bag with your rations- hammers in the front pouch, maybe a brick pulled from a decaying wall. Eddie didn’t need no gear, was all body and teeth as if he’d always been a weapon kept carefully concealed. There was a reaction akin to awed disgust that Chris felt when Eddie got real into it. The… precision of it all. It was nothing like the roll of your weight when he used to wrestle in gym class; nothing like throwing a punch to a nose. Eddie desecrated with a grace that left both him and the prisoner inside-out. But Chris doesn’t think about that anymore.

He pulls the fleshy roll of the bridge of his nose between his fingers, then moves on to bury his eyes behind meaty knuckles. He feels the urge to reach down and pat the briefcase, reward it for its patience.

It’s been easier in the States.

It’s been easier, having direct targets with specific phrases that need to come out of them. They weren’t assigned any specific goals to accomplish with the men tied to the chair. There was one, overwhelmingly unspoken order- _don’t let them be human_ , that erupted from their superiors and their own moral squeamishness. Otherwise… it was just. For fun. See how much you will permit yourself to do.

“I lost my myself,” Eddie would whimper, curled up in their tent on the perimeter of the town, cradling his head.

But Chris could never pity him.

 _He_ had found himself.

But he doesn’t think about that anymore.

A woman across smiles at him when their eyes accidentally graze. He offers a small hello, then looks downward. By the time the bus rumbles to a stop at South Burlington, he’s on his feet with the suitcase clutched in his palm, they key light in his fist.

-

He runs his fingertips over the jagged edge of the key, settled loudly in his pocket, but his eyes drag across the cell phone screen and to the stoic red dot on the satellite grid. A small tracker on the bumper of the man’s car was enough, though he _did_ consider pulling up the garage door and greeting the man in bed. The night he’d visited the house, it was dark. Eddie Gluskin lived old and alone. Senior Eddie Gluskin, that is.

Chris scans the parking lot, eyeing the muted green light that clings to the bottom of one of the cars. Tightening the clutch on his bag, he curves around the side of the building and enters the diner.

The air is peaked with vapor from steaming dishes and smoking coffee, warming the air until the windows are bathy swirls against the outside chill. The clattering of silverware is muffled; most of the diners are in their elder years, scraping the food slowly towards them.

“Seat yourself, soldier,” an aproned waitress prods him, the roundness of her belly swaddled in red, balancing the tray cradled about her arm. “Just not too close to the door. Chilly place.”

With eyes scanning the floor, he acknowledges her by a nod. The booths are mostly vacant, but his vision ends on one older man, breathing into his soup bowl. Chris moves.

Tucked into the table, the man is Eddie in name and appearance: he has the same aquiline nose, gray-blue eyes swimming deliberately through the world. His body is thin and silvery, however, with bones straining against the thinness of his flesh, and wrinkles ornamenting his exterior. He does not look like somebody capable of taking the weapons in Chris’ bag. But that’s never stopped him before.

With a purposeful passivity on his face, Chris stops at the booth and hoists his briefcase onto the table. He doesn’t face Eddie’s father until he’s slid into the seat across from him, resting his palms on the glass-gilded surface. He’s not trying to be intimidating- doesn’t need to. He’s watching the stages of confusion pass over the guy’s face. Learning what his internal structure is like.

“Okay.” He breathes out of his nose, feigning inconvenience. “I don’t normally do this around other people.” He makes a point not to glance to the side. He does not want to sustain the illusion that anybody else may be an interventionalist. “But I owe somebody somethin’ and I don’t like living in all this debt.”

He thumbs at the clasps on his briefcase, keeping the old man looking at him. Mr. Gluskin doesn’t say much. If anything, he just shakes vacantly as if too old to understand what he’s here for, but there’s a general awareness of fear on his face that Chris suspects has lived there for years now.

“I need you to talk to me.” He clicks open the case, spins the bag around on the table top. “Take a good fucking look before you open your mouth.”

He’s only brought one weapon today, but it does what he needs it to.

Mr. Gluskin lifts a photograph out of the briefcase, wrists trembling. There’s a cluttered collection of them here. He turns the one in his hand away from the aisle, but keeps looking at it. Father and son photographs taken sometime when Eddie was still pre-pubescent. Ain’t the scrapbook kind.

The man’s eyes flicker away, then down Chris’ camouflaged front. “You’re in the wrong uniform to be doing this,” he mumbles, “Finished my 300 months.”

The skin around Mr. Gluskin’s chin sags down, folding the corners of his mouth into a permanent frown. He couldn’t harm a person if he wanted to.

“You’re lucky with how it wrapped up,” Chris reminds him, protectively pulling his case away. As if Eddie is bundled up in it, and just keeping it shut will stop him from growing into an adult. “A child abuse sentence with a bit more tacked on for the perversity of sodomy. No rape charge, no child pornography charge, nothing.” Quietly, he turns the briefcase towards him and closes it. “Don’t matter anything, Mr. Gluskin. You ain’t got a lot of time to think about it. Just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget. Not now.”

The last photograph stays curled in the father’s fist, turning to the leftovers of a budless tongue. Chris slides easily out of the chair, pulling his case with him. He blinks a few times, letting his eyes settle. “Don’t worry much.” He smiles a bit, tangling a finger around the man’s hair. The older man looks up to the fist grasping his scalp. “I can assure you that you live on out there.”

He rips a patch of wispy hair from the male’s head, squints in repugnance, and snatches the photograph out of his grasping knuckles.

-

Behind the shed, Chris loads a second rifle in the darkness, setting it down on the steps. He’s sitting on the edge of the landing that leads to the back door of his shop, listening silently until leaves crunch under the shoes of an approaching visitor. He whistles out. Eddie’s face comes into view.

The twitch of apprehension makes itself clear as he trails his eyes up Chris’ body, managing to grate his vision from the man’s boot to his hardened face. He cocks his head. “Did you learn anything?” he tries.

Rising to his feet with popping knees, Chris grabs the two rifles off the ground and offers one to the younger. “You are your father’s son.”

In the woods, Chris selects a shroud of brush to hide behind, pointing the head of his weapon into the darkness of the forest. “I like night-hunting,” he undertones to Eddie, who barely glances at him. “It doesn’t feel quite such a betrayal, shooting the deer in the dark. Don’t get me wrong, it’s easier in the light- they feel protected, wander dangerously close to the street. But at night, they hide from us. They expect it.” He readjusts the angle. “The deeper you go, the more you’re allowed to do.”

Within the next freezing hour, the vague shape a deer finally pokes its head out of the darkness. Eddie’s rifle is raised to it, his eyes narrowed in concentration, but the gun trembles so viciously in his hand that Chris grabs the metal barrel and quells the pressure to shoot.

He leads Eddie deeper through the woods, where the trees become blades of grass and the earth curves down into a cliff structured by sharp, flat rocks. There was a point in his life when he’d take women here, show them the obscure view of natural decline beyond the sudden drop. It’s something that Eddie needs more than they did. He places the gun on the ground and lights a cigarette for himself.

On the rock’s surface, Chris lets Eddie settle into the space between his legs like they used to, back pressed against his chest. He brings the cigarette to the other’s lips, then back to his. The chalky scent of Eddie’s hair fills him even as smoke is streaming out of his nose. Years of flesh hunger claw at him.

“Eddie,” he murmurs into some part of the male’s shoulder, chewing thoughtlessly on the end of the paper. He spits the residue onto the ground. “I don’t gotta tell you what I learned from him. You know what he did. You just wanted somebody to see it.”

“You wanna see it?” Eddie snorts, “Just look at me. You’ll see it.” He scrapes his fingertips along the protruding minerals in the rock. He gets quiet, then adds, “I needed him to say it out loud.”

Chris distractedly edges the tips of his knuckles along the nape of Eddie’s neck, nodding. He does not offer contradicting details of truth. At least, Chris thinks, it is good to have somebody unwavering in confidence, even if it means thinking him still as vicious as he was at thirty. Maybe it would have been cathartic for Eddie to get a vocal admission. For Chris, the pictures are enough. “Yeah. He knows.”

Sighing, Eddie leans back, slimming his lips for another intake of tobacco. “Do you remember that first time they put us in the concrete room? Didn’t give an order, just left us with a guy from the war camp until we had the sense to tie him up.” He shrugs, spouting warm air. “Didn’t do good to ask why us. You were a damn good berserker. I can’t hit a fucking deer.”

“’Cause that’s not intimate enough for you,” Chris answers neutrally, then realizes what he’s said when Eddie prickles against his body.

“Are you wearing your tags?” Eddie spits back incredulously, feeling the cold jostle of a chain against his back. He spins, grabbing the metal charms from where they rest against Chris’ collar. “Take those the fuck off.”

The clasp pinches Chris’ neck as Eddie yanks them forward, severing the chain. His fingers flare out behind him, tossing the dog tags into the forest below.

Chris is on his feet in a second, towering above Eddie’s kneeling figure. The air around him snaps with indignance, extended through his limb as he grabs the male by the collar of his shirt. “Maybe you should try wearing yourself on the outside, Gluskin,” he snarls, fingers twisting. “Don’t send me on these shit missions, trying to convince me that you’re still a weeping woman being fucked by your dad. I ain’t seen that when I look at you, I see who your nature _showed_ me. I know you better than anybody in the world, and I have felt stunned by you, so don’t veneer yourself in petty whimpers.” He thrusts Eddie closer, then lets go. “I’ve already seen you, Eddie.”

Rubbing his collar, Eddie makes a passionless scowl. “Do you know how blessed he is to have jail behind him? They won’t even send me there, just make me walk around with it. I’m tired of being forgiven for doing the exact same shit just because somebody in charge let me.”

Brow furrowing further, Chris gapes for words. “So good for fucking you. You get to whine about your father making you a monster. Do you know how it feels when you realize it’s _organic_? How it feels when it’s just part of you?”

“I don’t give a fuck how that feels,” Eddie returns, growling low. He looks like he’s going to run off, so Chris grabs at his sleeve and stops him.

“Liar.” He pulls Eddie disgracefully to the ground, sending him stumbling back onto the rock. “I think you know that it was going to come out anyhow. You may have learned your own brand of violence, but it was going to be _something_.” He fishes into his pocket and throws the key into Eddie’s chest. “Your father is pig fodder.” He spits. “You’re special, Eddie. You’re the boar.”

Grabbing at the housekey, Eddie draws it near his stomach. It’s still too dark to see what’s down there, beyond the edge of the cliff. Obscure shapes cling to the horizon without betraying their details. He wants to smash this globe he’s carried around, the contained dome that holds the terror inside. But if he does that- if he throws his own dog tags into the distance, then- it’s not a symbol anymore. It’ll have to be real again.

As he looks up to Chris, the male’s chest heaving, he is more thankful than anything for the fact that this is the person who saw him gutted by his own capabilities.

“I lost mine in Bagram,” he admits.

Chris’ head tilts, pulse calming slowly.

“My tags. I used them for something and forgot and they were gone the next day.”

Without speaking, Chris settles back down beside Eddie, shifting his weight uncertainly. “I’m still confused by how delicate you are. For being so ruthless inside.”

Eddie’s reaction isn’t obvious. He just looks down into his lap. “You have antlers, man. You know. You have to take care of them because as soon as the velvet decays, it’s all weapon. S’only as beautiful as you deny what’s inside.”

“I don’t know.” Chris shrugs. “That’s kinda what I like about ‘em.”

They don’t doze as much as escape to the distance when they sit together through the night. Eddie’s thin body, extremities and limbs, submit to the cold. It’s hard to bend them after a while, but he manages to reach up to hold Chris’ chin in his hands while verbalizing a dream he had about the desert. Chris tries his best to impose some warmth.

When dawn begins to fill the area with fog and a subdued, gelid blueness, Eddie stands nakedly against the edge of the rock to look down into the forest below. He holds his clothing at his side, brutishly shivering but waiting to put them back on until his body has been chilled into the center of every bone.

Chris lies on the rock, watching the daylight pass through Eddie’s skin.

Eddie is still, but the dust suddenly begins to fall from his body.


End file.
